A heap of bowls rises from the floor. They pile on top of
one another -- sideways, bottoms up, tilted, precarious. But look closer: some
bowls have broken edges, some are patched, some are misshapen.

Between 200 and 300 white bowls lie on sandbags on the floor
of Eutectic Gallery, drawing the eye to their deliberate chaos. Given the
artist, they suggest skulls or bowls for sustenance or piles of army supplies.

Called "Duc Pho," they are part of an exhibit called "Art
Out of War" at the northeast Portland gallery. The show features the work of
four war veterans brought together for a month-long residency in Joseph,
Oregon, last summer. "Art Out of War" tells their stories through clay.

Eutectic is a new gallery dedicated to ceramics, housed in
the same building as Mudshark Studios, a custom and
production ceramics studio in Northeast Portland's Cully neighborhood. The
owners are Brett Binford, John-Fletcher Halyburton and Aaron Van de Graeff, working
in partnership with art veteran Jeffrey Thomas.

The artists -- Thomas Orr, Jesse Albrecht, Ehren Tool and
Daniel Donovan -- span American wars from Vietnam to Iraq. They met at the LH Project at the
base of the Wallowa Mountains to work clay with their hands and tell stories into
the early morning hours. There may have been drinking.

At 68, Orr is the oldest of the four, a
combat infantry lieutenant who was wounded twice in Vietnam. He created the
pile of bowls as a memorial layered with symbolism. In 1968, after being hit by a mortar, Orr recovered at an American base camp at Duc Pho, a rural district in south-central Vietnam. Sandbags
were everywhere, he recalls, used as bunkers and walls to keep the enemy out.

"Walls are really important to me," he
says. "I used to build walls. But sandbags keep you trapped. We felt much safer
out on patrol than in bunkers."

Jesse Albrecht spent 2003-4 in Iraq, during the time U.S. military police took photos of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. David Stabler/The Oregonian

The unadorned bowls have several
meanings: sustenance ("We need this thing to live."), skulls (Soldiers were discards. "That's how we felt, 'Go be cannon fodder'.") and as stacks of supplies
lying everywhere around the base, he says.

The red base of each bowl recalls the earth's
color. The bowl's color symbolizes the Asian tradition of white for mourning,
he says.

Orr, who retired last spring after
teaching ceramics at the Oregon College of Art and Craft for 18 years, doesn't
associate much with other veterans, he says.

"We went there by ourselves, we came
back by ourselves," he says. "I didn't have any buddies."

Thomas Orr, ceramic artist and Vietnam veteran, at "Art Out of War" exhibit at Eutectic Gallery.

So, he hesitated about spending a month
with three other veterans at the residency. But 10 minutes into it, he changed
his mind. "They were very warm and open."

As they worked together, Orr noticed
his art differed from theirs. After 45 years, his anger has subsided and his
art has become more symbolic, less literal, he says. Their images are raw and
disturbing. "They're still angry," he says.

Ehren Tool's cups line a wall at the
gallery. Hundreds of cups, with no handles. Skeletons, dollar bills, guns and
other figures emerge from their smooth sides.

Ehren Tool makes hundreds of cups with images of skeletons, guns and money. David Stabler/The Oregonian

Tool served in the Marine Corps from
1989-94, including the Gulf War. "I just make cups," he says in an artist
statement. "Written in stone on the Indiana War Memorial Building is 'To
vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the world.' I would like my work
to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the world. That is a lot to
ask of a cup."

Albrecht's large hooded figures
immediately recall the images of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Albrecht spent 2003-4
in Iraq, at the time U.S. military police personnel took photos of prisoners
there.

"It is important to hear directly from
the participants (of military conflict), and the arts provide form where the
experience and its result can be remade into something tangible," he writes. "Something
that allows the outsider – non-combatants – a chance to feel a sliver of our
emotions their tax dollars paid for. It is vital to remove the spin from the
combatants' experiences."

Donovan's glittering gold bars hang on
a wall, a reminder that money drives war. In 2003, he was deployed to Iraq for
18 months, hauling fuel tankers throughout the country.

He says, "Being a combat veteran, as
well as having unhealthy obsession with existential philosophy and science
fiction, has opened my eyes to the how truly brief and absurd our lives are...I
work to give these concepts and ideas form, to translate our absurdity into
beauty."